


Baby, I Built This Thing For You

by empty_marrow



Category: Profiler (TV 1996)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:34:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28306839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empty_marrow/pseuds/empty_marrow
Summary: Some day soon she's going to wake up and see the light.
Relationships: Jack of All Trades/Samantha Waters, Jack of All Trades/Sharon Lesher
Comments: 10
Kudos: 5
Collections: Profiler Fans - Holiday 2020





	Baby, I Built This Thing For You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mravensblood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mravensblood/gifts).



> Happy Holidays mravensblood! I hope this little bit of nostalgia throws some light into a crazy year.

.1.

Albert falls in love with her first.

It’s not a romance for the ages; that one comes later. But he’s the first one who really notices her – who sees her noticing _him_ – and he’s the one who knows what has to be done to set the grand plan in motion.

It doesn’t hurt that well-laid plans run best on the kind of cash and connections that fall squarely within his wheelhouse.

“I’m very honored that you’ve taken such an interest in my work, Mr. Newquay. I think you’ll find that the data is looking quite promising after the interim analysis.”

Dr. Walter Anderson is fond of two things: his daughter and the sound of his own voice, quite possibly not in that order. Albert puts up with one to have access to the other. A little male bonding over cocktail party conversation, he finds, has been every bit as good an investment as a newly-minted, fully-funded lab in California.

“You’ve made some impressive accomplishments already, Dr. Anderson. Your daughter must be very proud.”

“One would hope.” Anderson drains his third glass of champagne; Albert’s own observational data suggests that this is the doctor’s optimal alcohol level between chatty intimacy and maudlin annoyance. “We don’t see things eye to eye all that often anymore. I suspect this new career of hers has dulled any academic aspirations she might have had.”

He feels a frisson of annoyance at the man’s ignorance, hiding it with a swallow of champagne. “But surely she’s doing something very valuable for the world by putting these characters away, yes? I imagine some of them must pose quite a challenge.”

“Yes, well, I suppose at the end of the day one has to follow one’s calling after all. There is one very odd fellow who seems to be occupying her time lately, you’ve likely seen the news…”

Glass number four leads to a rambling tirade over the hardships of single fatherhood and the god-awful changes in the world over the last twenty years. It also nets Albert a high school photograph of Samantha Anderson.

He tapes it up to his computer as soon as he gets home – an outdated display compared to the digital version of her official FBI picture that serves as his screensaver, but he appreciates the contrast. Long straight dark blonde hair and a pink lace headband are a far cry from the well-coiffed sophisticated image on his screen, but the eyes have the same quality in both. There’s a haunted look there, an emptiness that’s asking to be filled with meaning.

And at the end of the day, one must follow one’s calling.

Albert Newquay leans forward and plants a soft kiss on Samantha Anderson’s forehead, just below the pink headband.

Two days later, Dr. Samantha Waters speaks his new name at a press conference, and Jack of all Trades rises from Albert’s ashes.

.2.

He sees her one year later at a different cocktail party, this one held by the Violent Crimes Task Force to celebrate the opening of their new office complex in Atlanta. This one is a simpler affair, with fewer people and cheaper alcohol. The guest list is limited to VCTF-adjacent workers and their spouses, but the catering company was only too happy to hire him on for the night with minimal vetting when their bartender failed to show up.

Good help is so hard to come by these days.

“One red wine, please – Sam, what would you like?”

The man in front of him is tall and quietly handsome, less movie star than rising academic star; if her father had half the insight he credited himself with he might notice that her subconscious still sought his approval.

“One white wine, please.” She’s more of a vision than usual with her hair pinned up and a long black gown that bares her neck and just hints at the tips of her shoulders. He’s kept her busy lately and it shows in the weight she’s lost, just this side of too much to be healthy; he reminds himself to be more considerate of her well-being in the future, even as he’s imagining the feel of his tongue over those glass-sharp clavicles.

And Jack should just smile and pour, but he can’t leave it that way when she’s so close and the danger is so delicious.

“You have a choice in whites, actually. We have a sweeter Riesling or a more complex chardonnay.”

He could swear there’s a beat where he speaks and she meets his eyes, some spark of recognition, and he’s cursing himself for an overeager fool just as the man at her side distracts her.

“My sweet wife will have the sweet Riesling.” He pulls her toward him and gives her a quick kiss on the temple, startling a laugh out of her and making Jack feel equal parts rage and relief.

He’s not so out of control that he doesn’t go with the relief as he reaches for the wine bottle.

“Actually, I’ll have the chardonnay. A girl has to be a little complex once in awhile, right?”

He grins back at her, a co-conspirator in on the joke, then hands her a fresh glass while he takes her used one. He watches her walk away, tucked against the man at her side.

At the end of the night he returns home, pulls the used wineglass from his jacket and fills it with a much higher-quality Batard-Montrachet that Tom Waters would never be able to pronounce, much less afford. He toasts her image as she stares back at him from the screen, then places his lips precisely over the imprint of hers.

The bartender’s body shows up on the VCTF’s doorstep two days later. Mother always emphasized the importance of a proper thank you for an event well-enjoyed, and he wasn’t about to fall down on the job now.

.3.

The insects were the first mistake.

It doesn’t help that she can’t see and it’s cold in the old warehouse and Robin Poole is screaming in the background. But he can _feel_ her recoil when she knocks into the aquarium and hears the chittering of the cicadas near her head, he can almost smell the dread radiating off her, and he realizes she has a phobia that consumes her more than any temporary blindness.

Remorse has always been a foreign emotion to him, but he feels it now as he realizes he’s thrown her into a situation where she can’t even focus on him and their teachable moment. It makes him eager to try regardless.

It also makes her confrontational and fucking _angry_ with him.

“This isn’t fate and I’m nobody special. You were a case I caught. You’re just my bad luck!”

“I just want you to appreciate me.” He hates backpedaling like this, knows it’s too late to salvage today even as he says the words. “I don’t think your admiration is too much to ask after all I’ve done, do you?”

“That’s what all this is about? You want me to admire you? You want to be close to me, is that it?”

A new expression crosses her face, confusion and fear melting away to reveal something hard and cunning, and oh, how he loves the mind behind those beautiful baby blues even when it’s poised to take him apart. 

“OK then, come on, take my hand.”

Blind and terrified as she is, he can still see that small triumphant smirk twisting her lips when she knows she’s called his bluff.

Hours later, when he’s home nursing the broken ribs she gave him right before Nick Cooper and the cavalry burst onto the scene , Jack turns that scenario around and around in his head, cursing himself for not accepting the offer. 

Because he won’t have the chance again for a long time, and that thought fucking _hurts_ more than breathing does right now, even though he knows it was the right thing to do.

But how he _wants_. Wants to take her hand, to bite the smirk off her lips. Wants to have her under him, naked and struggling, right up to the moment that she stops telling him to go fuck himself and begs him to fuck her.

Her lipstick is a pink smear across the cloth he’d soaked in chloroform; he wraps himself in it, knowing it’s as close as he’ll get to her lips against his skin, and jerks himself off until his ribs are on fire and his voice is hoarse.

.4.

Jack has dreamed in blue all his life.

It’s just something that happens, not bothersome and hardly worth the time it would take to reflect on any underlying symbolism. But it helps alert him to the fact that he’s dreaming. What Jack can understand, he can control.

And blue suits Samantha.

She joins him in his dreams more and more often. The scenario changes: over the course of the past month she’s appeared in his home, in her VCTF office, and in a convertible driving up the Pacific Coast Highway. Once she showed up floating on some disembodied cloudlike thing after he’d been up for thirty-six hours and was on the verge of hallucinating even before he fell asleep.

She appears in his bed tonight.

“I missed you,” she whispers in his ear, running a warm tongue up the side of his neck and stopping to nip at his jaw.

He shifts under her and she laughs, pinning his hips with her spread thighs as she pulls her shirt over her head. He palms her through her black bra, pinching her nipples into hard little peaks and watching the long line of her throat as she swallows and throws her head back. She’s warm and wet against his bare skin, and he’s sweating as he tries to wrest control of the rhythm she’s creating.

“Tell me that you want me, Jack.” She raises up and sinks onto him with a moan that he feels all the way to his toes.

“Always,” and she’s wild and beautiful and his. 

But there’s something _wrong_ here that he can’t quite catch. He grabs at her hips, keeping her tight against him as he thrusts up into her, and stares hard at her face. 

It’s not right.

“So good, baby,” she says in a voice that isn’t hers, and “mmm, I want it,” and her face is dissolving, and “ooh, fuck me, Daddy,” and then there’s no blue and no Samantha at all. 

There’s only Sharon Lesher, loudly fucking him awake and back into the reality of his mistakes. And he’d really like to kill her on the spot for pulling him away from one of the few stolen moments that gives him hope for the future he’s creating.

But he’s still hard and left wanting from his dream, so he puts his sad little understudy on her hands and knees in front of him, ass in the air with her ridiculous unicorn tramp-stamp staring back at him. He fucks her that way, thrusting hard into her until the headboard bangs the wall and he finishes to the sounds of her screams. Her slack satisfied expression is the coda to this uninspiring phase of his plan; if ever he needed a sign that she’s served her purpose, this was it.

Jack rolls onto his side, his back to the little misstep sleeping in his bed, and tries to recapture his dream. 

He thinks of a little blonde girl, and the little boy who calls her his Sunday School sweetheart; he thinks of a secret lab in California waiting to be discovered, and all the beautiful teachable moments inside.

His world starts to turn blue again and he smiles as he reclaims his peace. Samantha will be back before he knows it.

***


End file.
